


Between

by quigonejinn



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-09
Updated: 2012-04-09
Packaged: 2017-11-03 07:38:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The third courier comes at the end of fall, except he does not look like a courier. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between

**Author's Note:**

> First posted to [DW](http://quigonejinn.dreamwidth.org/165377.html#cutid1) on 8/16/2010.

The third courier comes at the end of fall, except he does not look like a courier. 

... 

Your parents met, as most do, at the harvest. Your father accompanied the barley crop into town in order to oversee the counting-out for the agent at the agreed-upon price, and your mother was working as a clerk in the store. Your father saw her then, but said nothing. 

A year later, after the wheat was in, he went down to her small lodgings at the edge of town. He stood with hat in hand and his best robes on him, and asked if she would come to dance on the green with him -- the window stayed dark for a while, long enough that he began to fear, but a light eventually came, and your mother stepped out, smiling, hands stretched toward him. 

Your father says that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. How much he loves her has never been in doubt. 

...

When you were eight and your brother was still small enough that he had learned to walk, but not to run and they had not yet discovered him to be an Earthbender, an emergency called both your father and your mother away for a week. Your grandmother came during the day. During the night, one of your aunts were there to watch over you and the baby. One night, though, there was a dance, and that aunt, having her eye upon a man from two towns over, was determined to go and make a showing. She left you alone with the hired girl. 

Your brother somehow got onto the table, of course, and then fell off. He came down badly on his side, and began to sob and scream. You tried to ignore him at first, and the hired girl tried to distract him, but the screaming grew louder and louder, and he did not move from where he had fallen on the floor. You could tell that he was in genuine pain, not just pretending, and nothing would soothe him until, in desperation, you grabbed the kitchen spoon and began to bang on the table, slow and steady. At this, he stopped howling and took a deep breath and turned his eyes to you. And to keep him from starting again, you sang the lullaby that your mother would sing when she thought you had already gone to sleep: 

_Grow strong, my child,  
Strong as the dragon -- _

At the place where your mother took in a deep breath, you did not. Instead, you screamed at the hired girl to get your grandmother.

_Take me away,  
Away to glory -- _

How much you love your mother has never been in doubt. It took you a few years, because you were young, and you did not want to believe it, but you are not stupid. You have always kept her secret.

... 

The first courier comes at the beginning of spring, mounted on an eel-hound. He goes away empty-handed. The second courier comes in the fullness of summer, mounted on a shirshu, and she goes away bearing an empty message tube. The third courier comes at the end of fall, but he does not look like a courier: he is mounted on an ostrich-horse. His clothes are brown, without markings to indicate house or nation. He wears a round hat made from bamboo leaves to keep the wind from his face, and his voice is low and steady. 

He has a message for your mother, the hired girl says. This happens, from time to time; the agents to whom your father deals know that even if he is away, your mother is to be trusted to stand for him. So the messenger is shown in, past the outer wall, through to inner courtyard, to the steps of the inner house itself. Your father is only a country gentleman, but this is deep in the heart of the Earth Kingdom. The land is rich, and the harvests heavy. The wars to conquer and re-conquer were fought far away. 

Your mother stands on the steps. You and your brother are a little further inside the house, in the entryway. The hired girl has her hand on your brother's shoulder.

"My son," your mother says, softly, in a tone that you have never heard before. 

The hired girl gasps, and the man before your mother drops to his knees. 

Very slowly, you draw the sword that your fighting teacher has just started allowing you to wear. 

...

This is what you know of your mother's secret: she was from the Fire Nation, and in some ways, the life that she left behind was better than what she has now. There was status. There was wealth. Your father can give her comfort and prosperity, but those are different. You are old enough and far enough into being teenaged and uncoordinated and awkward to know that the grace your mother has in each motion -- picking up a spoon, putting your brother on her hip, hanging glass pearls on a gold wire from your ear in preparation for dancing, the angle of her head while she works on the household accounts -- is strange and beautiful and rare. 

You have also seen the scars on the bottom of her feet and the burns on her arms and legs, true, but what of them? 

Your mother sings Earth Kingdom harvest songs, and sings them well, but at night, with the weight of a loved child in her arms and the quiet of a happy household sleeping, what comforts her is a lullaby she sang to another family. 

Your mother looks at you or brother with love in her eyes and hands and a smile on her mouth, but what does she see? Your brother is only six, and even he has come to the conclusion that this strange man has come to take your mother away. 

...

There was another family, you know. Other children. Another husband. Another house, another lifetime. Did she love them? How much does your father know? You do not want to admit to yourself how much the boy on his knees looks like her. 

...

Your mother reaches under the brim of his hat to touch him on the cheek to get him to look up at her, and when she does, she slides her fingers halfway down. He undoes the knot holding the hat on his head, and her fingers still on his face, they look at each other for a long time. Your heart is beating so loudly that it makes it hard to breathe. 

"I couldn't get away any sooner," he says. "I sent -- " 

You risk a look behind you. The hired girl's mouth hangs open. Your brother stands there, face white. 

...

The courtyard is not terribly large, but large enough to feel strange in this circumstance. 

...

"Your sister?"

"There are better days and worse days."

"Your uncle?"

"He owns a tea shop in Ba Sing Se." 

He is about to ask her to go with him, you think. He is about to tell her more detail about these people that she still wants to hear about, that she still cares for. You can see it from the look on his face: he is suddenly and wildly hopeful, and he starts to speak, but there is something that she wants to say, someone she wants to ask about, but can't bring herself to, so she touches the corner of his mouth, and he goes silent. 

The courtyard is not terribly large, but large enough to feel strange in this circumstance. The walls are thick and come to above a man's head. The front court is paved with flat pieces of bluestone, fitted together and brought from the distance of two days travel. It is the custom and the tradition to have a wide, bare space like this in the front, for the receiving of guests and the holding of ceremonies. When the weather is clear, you practice your swordwork out here; in the winter, if the snow is not too deep and the weather is clear, one of the farmhands sweeps off a clean place for you to practice. Your mother has arranged for a small pleasure garden in the back with a pond. There is a small willow by the side, and turtle-ducks visit in the right season. 

Your half-brother stays on his knees in front of her, and neither of them say anything, though her hand remains on his face. She lifts her hand away from his mouth and touches his face at the brow, near the start of the large, red mark on the left side of his face. 

"A mother would give her life to protect her children," she says, finally. "I have already given mine for you once." 

She draws her hand away. His face falls, and he is about to say something else -- ask to write letters, maybe, or come visit again -- but she turns her back and comes past the threshold where you and your brother and the hired girl stand. Your mother puts her hand on your shoulder and your brother's elbow. She tells your brother that even though his father is away, this does not make him the man of the house and you, young lady, are to put your sword away. 

You look over your shoulder to see your half-brother, and for a moment, before the hired girl closes the door, you are staring at him, and he is staring back at you with light brown eyes in a face so filled with grief and so resembling -- resembling something that it stops your breath. 

...

First frost, then snow. Winter arrives, and your father returns. He has presents for everyone from selling the harvest, including cloth for a new robe for the hired girl, new boots for the farm hands. A new short sword for you, toys with stone wheels for your Earthbending brother, and a new comb for your mother. This last is made out of a dark, fragrant wood, and inlaid with mother of pearl to show peonies in bloom. The workmanship is intricate and expensive; in fact, it was almost imprudent of your father to spend so much buying it, but the harvest was very fine, and your mother very beautiful and loved. 

One night, weeks after the third courier has come, you find your mother sitting in the main room. The fire is banked low, and there are no lights. She wears her hair down over her shoulders, and when you touch her on the shoulder, she does not turn. 

You curl up next next to her, though, on the high-backed bench, and put her head in your lap. Eventually, she takes her eyes from the fire, and she fits her present into your hair. You can smell it, feel the weight of it, and you settle your head back into her lap. You can smell your mother, too, and her hand touches your hair and face. Neither of you speaks, but after a while, as you begin to sleep, she begins to sing, low and quiet and only a little hoarse, in the voice of someone unused to letting herself grieve. 

...

_Grow strong, my child,  
Strong as the dragon -- _

_Take me away,  
Away to glory -- _

_Remember, bright child,  
The single living soul  
Divided between you and me._


End file.
